Category Archives: finished objects

All Matchy-Matchy

Well, I didn’t mean to just fall of the planet there, but I guess I did. I’ve just been too sleepy lately at night to do any computer stuff, or should I say computer stuff thatΒ  I need to think about. Random clicking, sure. A thoughtful sentence? Not as long at Spinner keeps up this incredibly slow process of getting his molars and waking up at 4:30 in the morning.

But I DO have some FO’s to report that I’m incredibly happy with. And the best part, I actually planned it all out ahead and I now have winter gear that actually matches. Because if you are like me, you just go ahead and knit a sweet pair of mitts and then realize it clashes with your scarf, your hat, or whatever else you’ve got to wear. Not this time. My new green coat was screaming for purple accessories.

First up, Damson by Ysolda Teague. I want to knit every pattern she has written, I love her stuff that much. This was an easy knit, except for the one inch I didn’t notice my YO’s were on the wrong side of the stitch marker. I noticed two inches past and decided it wasn’t noticeable enough to frog, so I went with it.

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Next, my Head Hugger from Stitch and Bitch Nation. This has been waiting in my stash for four years to be completed. Guess I needed the green coat to get it OTN.

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Lastly, my garter stitch mitts from Weekend Knitting. There aren’t a lot of patterns I knit over and over again but this is one of them.

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I knit with my own handspun from Loop in Earth Goddesss (she’s doing a shop update today and had some of this last night as well, you might be able to snag a batt.)
Knitting these was an education in how to spin for a project:
1. I might want to be more aware of what I might be spinning. The color differences would have been fine with a hat but with mitts they look a bit too different.
2. Same with plying and size. Notice how one mitt is bigger than the other?
3. Density matters. My earlier spinning (this is at least a year or more old) was pretty dense. I really like a lighter yarn, but I think recently I’ve solved that problem.

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So there you have it, one very matchy-matchy ensemble. And I’m sad to see I have only close ups, nothing of the whole thing!! But trust me, it’s very cute.

Quick question before I wish you all a happy weekend. Is it okay to just do Ravelry links these days? Do I have any regular readers who aren’t on Ravely who would like regular links? Please let me know and I’ll be sure to post them, otherwise I’m just posting Ravelry links from now on.

Now I can say, have a great weekend! I for one will be playing with my new serger. And working on the start of some new reviews on Monday. If you’ve been wondering which sock books to buy, I think I can help you out!

 

P.S If you are a local sewer, be sure to stop by and visit Sewtropolis, a sweet little sewing studio in South Minneapolis. She’s got a great line up of classes scheduled!!

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Filed under finished objects, handspun, hats, knitting, mittens/gloves, scarf, shawls

I Love My Dumb Socks (The Copycat Socks)

I can tell this will be the new game this summer. I’ve gone full throttle with the whole dumb thing, much to Little Man’s delight and confusion.

Here are the dumb socks. I have also knit another pair of even dumber socks, which I’ll show you in another post.
Copycat

These are actually my Copycat socks. I copied the pattern off a pair of store bought knee-highs my sister-in-law was wearing. These are a few years in the making since I
lost the second ball of yarn for quite some time.
Copycat

The pattern:

Size one needles, about 8 stitches per inch gives you a medium sock.

I used a Double Start cast on for 70 stitches. (Nancy Bush, Knitting on the Road. See a tutorial here.)

The basic stitch pattern is:
Round one: k8, k2tog, yo.
Round two: knit.

Knit a basic heel flap, continue the stitch pattern across the top and pick your favorite toe. I used the standard k2tog, ssk.

The sock yarn is from Sandy’s Palette.
Copycat

Personally, I love them.

As for the whole “dumb” thing, I’m going to try the humor route with this one. Words like dumb, stupid and shut up have been favorites of Little Man’s lately. Some of it is from school, obviously, and it’s every kindergartner’s job to see how far he can go with certain words. (Believe me, he’s tried them all. Dumb is tame compared to what he let loose the other day).

Aside from what he picks up on the bus, a lot of it has surprisingly come from books we’ve read…. Superfudge? It was a favorite of mine as a kid so I grabbed it from the library, but wow, the put downs really fly! We love to read here, and Little Man will sit and listen for ages to just about anything. I still love Fudge, but it is a bit of a bummer when it seems that every book written is full of name calling.

Now, I’m not naive. Kids have been calling each other names for as long as there have been kids*. And I do believe that dumb, stupid and the like have their purpose. It just seems that when I compare The Secret Garden to Spiderwick (both of which are great stories) it’s a small handful of putdowns vs. dozens of them….

Not sure where I’m even going with this now. It’s late, I want to go knit. My point? I’m tired of shut up and stupid and dumb and all that jazz, but I’m going to play the game and try to have a bit of fun with my kids to get my point across. Which is why Little Man was totally confused today when I asked him if my new socks were more dumb, less dumb, or equally as dumb as my Copycat socks. And then I went upstairs and laughed like a crazy lady.

*Just yesterday, Laura Ingalls told Nellie Oleson to shut up in
“On the Banks of Plum Creek.” πŸ™‚

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Filed under family, finished objects, home, kids, socks, Uncategorized

Nice

I love winter. But I hate the thawing season, the season where a perfectly dry set of steps suddenly becomes the stoop of death as you walk to your car. At 7am in the morning, when you know it’s glare ice and you need to be really careful, but you’re carrying your lunch, breast pump, tote bag, computer, two boxes to get shipped at the PO, and your coffee, it seriously sucks. It sucks even more so when you then fall, pull a muscle so badly that it leaves you in tears on the back steps for a few minutes until you finally realize that no one in the house can hear you, so you drag yourself to the door get helped inside and assess the damage.

The damage seems to be that I’ve pulled or torn the muscle on top of my thigh (what’s that called?) so badly that I can barely walk. Ibuprofen and ice have dampened the pain enough that now I can sit here, bored and hurting, being tweaked that I’ve got to miss a day of work and trying the get the boys to not touch Mommy.

This is what sucks about teaching. I could sit here and type all day long but no way can I teach. And when I only work two and a half days a week, a day out means I’m even more behind on fixing the broken violins, making copies, planning curriculum and the other million things I need to do that I can’t do from home since I don’t have my stuff. Plus my kids now miss music this week, which they already basically missed for nearly four months since the sub I had was not a musician. Needless to say, I am not a happy mama this morning. Because not only is the work issue a pain, but not being able to walk when you have three young boys is not easy. Thank goodness the Skeptic is home on my work days, but still. Not easy.

So anyway, as I sit here bored and hurting I will at least show off a few FO’s in the knitting department. I’ve got lots to update including WIP’s and some cool spinning, but then this post would be a book. So we’ll keep it to FO’s today.

First up:
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This is Spinner modeling the handspun hat I gave to my friend Rebecca a few weeks go at her shower. This was some merino, dyed in fours separate rovings that I plied together. The pattern is simply a basic hat with a purl row before I did the decreases. Sadly it was not blocked since I finished it ten minutes before I had to leave, but she’s a knitter so she understood.

Next up, Little Man’s John Deere mittens. He picked the colors himself, because John Deere tractors rule and since he is a farm deprived city kid, he’s got to get his farm fix somehow. So he wears a green uniform most of the time, mittens included.
Checkered Mittens

This pattern was from Kristin Nichols’ book, Kristin Knits and is called Checks and Dots. If you’ve never tried fair isle before this pattern would be a great first project. I used good old Lamb’s Pride for this one. And yes, that is a mistake.

My Ubernatural is done, but awaits buttons, so you’ll have to wait too!

In the meantime I’ll be sitting in this rocker, knitting my newest project and hoping I’ll be on my feet again soon. If anyone has suggestions on healing up, let me know. I’ve never had an injury like this and still can’t get over how much this hurts. Yikes!

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Filed under finished objects, handspun, hats, random

Calorimetry Part Two

I almost had to Kinnear him.
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But he did consent to this picture of the mop of hair neatly under control in his mutt of a Calorimetry. I wish you could see the mess of hair that emerges from it. As I predicted, he did emit a “hmmm” when he unwrapped it and I had to explain what exactly it was, but he’s been wearing it ever since.

In the meantime, I was extremely spoiled this year for Valentine’s Day:
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That beautiful Lazy Kate?? He MADE it for me!! I am a lucky girl. It took the inaugural run today and it works so much better than the built in on my Traveller.

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Filed under family, finished objects, giving, handspun

This is either really ugly or really cool…

When I met the Skeptic way back in college, he had long hair. And I men really long, curly, down to the waist kind of long. Gorgeous, gorgeous hair. As the years went on he cut it shorter, and shorter and one day it was gone. He had a regular guy haircut which has pretty much stuck around the last decade or so.

However, he seems to have developed some sort of haircut phobia lately and has been letting it get longer in between trims. Longer in a sort of “I’m planning on auditioning for the next Jane Austen movie” sort of way. And I like it. A LOT. He knows this, so despite the fact that he keeps complaining it’s in his face he’s been keeping it long, partly for me and partly for his salonaphobia*.

He’s dealt with the hair-in-the-face thing by wearing his cowl up around his head like a headband when he’s in the house. This does this trick, but then it gets too stretched out and bunches up at the back of his head. So I though of the perfect Valentines’ Day gift for him. A guy Calorimetry! Something to keep those nice curls out of his eyes so he doesn’t give in and go get a haircut.

Here’s the result:

(I like how it’s smiling)

with flash:
Calorimetry

without:
Calorimetry

The choice is, and you may be quite honest here….
A) It’s a really nice Calorimetry.
B) It looks like it had the potential to be a nice Calorimetry, but it looks like I ran out of Noro #1, found some more Noro scraps in the closet, ran out of that, and finished it off with a a few rows of tweed.

He’s getting it no matter what, as he wears everything I knit for him whether he likes it or not. He will either love it, or he’ll say, “Hmmm, that’s an interesting mix of colors there, Bec.” And then he’ll wear it all day long because he knows I worked hard on it. He’s very sweet that way. So I can give him ugly knitting if need be. Or maybe it’s not ugly. I can’t decide.

Well, ugly knitting or not, I hope you all had a happy Valentine’s Day today! We’re celebrating tomorrow as the poor Skeptic is currently suffering through some miserable gig at a VFW right now. And I’m off to watch Dr. Who and knit my Ubernatural now that my Valentine’s prep for tomorrow is done.

*A combination of a hatred for making appointments, being too cheap to pay for it, and a string of bad trims.

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Filed under family, finished objects, hats

Blessings

I meant to pop in to say Merry Christmas, but wow the week flew by and suddenly it was here and gone! What a lovely Christmas it was, and here it is, New Years Eve already! The poor Skeptic is at work tonight, the big boys asleep, Spinner snuggling on my lap, and I thought I’d take this quiet time to share a few gifts and moments from the last couple weeks.

We stenciled, painted, sewed, cut, baked and knit our way to the holiday and amazingly, most of the list was done. The major casualties? A skein of Malabrigo that had an untimely injury (sorry, Mom. I think the bag I got you from Annik was better anyway!), the Skeptic only had a sock and a half by Christmas morning, and my father-in-law received a neckwarmer still on the needles since I left the second ball of yarn at home. But aside from that, gifts were wrapped, food was made, little boys were thrilled, and Christmas was beautiful.

Baby-lovey

Pencil rolls

Little Man's Owl

stenciled shirts

Owls by Little Man

Squirrels

Disaster

Cookies

The Guy Next Door Neckwarmer

Stollen

Blessings, peace and joy to you all on this New Years Eve!!!

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Filed under crafting with kids, family, finished objects, giving, knitting, sewing

Gifts

The gifts are flying off the needles right now. Most I can’t post about quite yet, but these two are gifts that were already given away the other week. I made both our midwives as a thank you for all they did in helping our family to have the homebirth of our dreams.

The first is the morning sun scarf from Spin Off Summer 2008:
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MAJOR scare before I gave this to her. Both our midwives were here for our final follow-up appointment. Midwife #1 was admiring Spinner’s longies, when Midwife #2 said she wished should could knit them, but she had developed a wool allergy and couldn’t wear or knit with it anymore!! Immediately I thought of her scarf sitting on the table in a gift bag….what do I do??? Yikes!! Then I remembered it was knit with Atacama Araucania… alpaca!!! I chanced it, gave it to her, and she loved it. She reported back later that she wore it all day and not and itch!

This was a quick knit. There is a similar free pattern on Ravelry if you’re interested.

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Next up, for my other midwife, is the Crown Mountain superwash merino I had shown you on the wheel a few weeks ago. I plied it up and it ended up being somewhere between a worsted and bulky weight; maybe a size 9 needle? It turned out lovely and pretty even. A few thick or thin sports here or there but mostly the same thickness. And the color was so nice. I wish it had been sunnier when I photographed it.

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Both of these women are such generous, amazing people. I couldn’t imagine going through another pregnancy and birth without them!

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Filed under finished objects, giving, scarf, spinning, Uncategorized

A Story and a Soaker

So ages ago I repaired some gorgeous fair-isle mittens for a friend. I was completely in love with them, and even more so when I found out who made them.
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See this loveliness? Her great-grandpa knit these for her grandmother (born 1916) when she was a young woman. Her name is even knit into these.
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I guess the story goes that he injured himself in an electrocution accident while at work. His doctor prescribed knitting as a way to get the agility back in his hands. Obviously he took to it because these are absolutely beautiful!!

Now this same friend has a son a few months older than Spinner. Continuing on with my soakermania I just finished a pair of Picky Pants for him. Now when he and Spinner are hanging out they can both be super cute together in all their wooly goodness.
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He’s obviously pleased with them and knows he looks quite smart. The yarn is more Blackberry Ridge Kaleidoscope. Love that stuff, it hardly pills at all.
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And now to sum it all up, despite a horrific experience with dishcloth cotton a couple of years ago, this friend has succumbed to the wool. Not only is she now knitting, but she is the proud owner of a skein of Koigu, a skein of Malabrigo, and she got her Ravelry invite this morning. There’s no going back for her now!

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Filed under finished objects, knitting, mittens, random, soakers

A cowl problem…

I made a cowl to match this hat, using the rest of the Posh yarn IΒ  got from Mrs. Pao. As usual, the yarn is gorgeous! But I think I cast on too many stitches. The cowl is a little wider than I’d like, and it also has a tendency to roll despite the garter stitch I added at the end and beginning. I’d like it to stand up a bit more as well.

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So now I’m stuck with a decision. It’s not exactly what I wanted. However, it does the trickand my neck is warm (at least around the house and outside on the not-too-cold days). It looks fine, just not great. Plus I’m working on a cowl for the Skeptic now and won’t feel like re-knitting this one again, so I’ll probably leave it as is for now.Β  Spinner adoes ppreciate the cowl rather than a scarf, which would tickle him as he naps in his favoriteΒ  hangout.

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Filed under finished objects, knitting, scarf

Grey…

The Minnesota greyness has settled in for November.

We awoke to snow yesterday. The sun wasn’t even up all the way and the boys were bundled up and outside.
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Today we have rain, wet leaves, and more grey. The greyness really doesn’t get to me until late in the winter when I really start craving sunny days and spring flowers. Until then I enjoy it. The grey feels cozy and warm, perfect for tea and sweaters.

It does make it hard to take a good knitting picture.

Blocking. (On an ugly green towel!)
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More blocking, with the close up of the area that Knittykid ripped out, I picked up and hoped it would block out evenly. It’s not.
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I’ll post more on these projects when I do have a good sunny day and can get some nice finished shots. In the meantime I’m off to make some cornbread and chili for the boys and their uncle and aunt tonight. The Skeptic (and Spinner) and I are out for our anniversary. (Which was two weeks ago and under so much baby brain fog I completely forgot to post about it.)

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Filed under family, finished objects, hats, kids, knitting, scarf